I argue that moral philosophers have either misunderstood the problem of moral demandingness or at least failed to recognize important dimensions of the problem that undermine many standard assumptions. It has been assumed that utilitarianism concretely directs us to maximize welfare within a generation by transferring resources to people currently living in extreme poverty. In fact, utilitarianism seems to imply that any obligation to help people who are currently badly off is trumped by obligations to undertake actions targeted at improving (...) the value of the long-term future. Reflecting on the demands of beneficence in respect of the value of the far future forces us to view key aspects of the problem of moral demandingness in a very different light. GPI Working Paper No. 1-2020. (shrink)

This dissertation explores the idea and ethics of vaccination for the sake of others. It conceptually distinguishes four different kinds of vaccination—self-protective, paternalistic, altruistic, and indirect—based on who receives the primary benefits of vaccination and who ultimately makes the vaccination decision. It describes the results of focus group studies that were conducted to investigate what people who might get vaccinated altruistically think of this idea. It also applies the different kinds of vaccination to ethical issues surrounding COVID-19, such as lockdown (...) measures, routine or mandatory vaccination of healthy children, and the ethical justification of restrictive measures for unvaccinated people. A more general philosophical account of vaccination ethics is ultimately developed, which is based not on moral duties, but on the moral reasons that people may have to get vaccinated for the sake of others. It is argued that such reasons may be stronger or weaker, depending on various factors related to the vaccines in question and the specific epidemiological circumstances. (shrink)

Gibt es überzeugende Überforderungseinwände gegen anspruchsvolle moralische Auffassungen? In diesem Buch werden Überforderungseinwände präzise charakterisiert, systematisch eingeordnet und argumentativ verteidigt. Unter Berücksichtigung der wichtigsten philosophischen Beiträge zum Thema wird gezeigt, weshalb gewisse Moraltheorien und -prinzipien dafür kritisiert werden können, dass sie zu viel von einzelnen Personen verlangen.

Partiality is the special concern that we display for ourselves and other people with whom we stand in some special personal relationship. It is a central theme in moral philosophy, both ancient and modern. Questions about the justification of partiality arise in the context of enquiry into several moral topics, including the good life and the role in it of our personal commitments; the demands of impartial morality, equality, and other moral ideals; and commonsense ideas about supererogation. This paper provides (...) an overview of the debate on the ethics of partiality through the lens of the domains of permissible and required partiality. After outlining the conceptual space, I first discuss agent-centred moral options that concern permissions not to do what would be impartially optimal. I then focus on required partiality, which concerns associative duties that go beyond our general duties to others and require us to give special priority to people who are close to us. I discuss some notable features of associative duties and the two main objections that have been raised against them: the Voluntarist and the Distributive objections. I then turn to the justification of partiality, focusing on underivative approaches and reasons-based frameworks. I discuss the reductionism and non-reductionism debate: the question whether partiality is derivative or fundamental. I survey arguments for ‘the big three’, according to which partiality is justified by appeal to the special value of either projects, personal relationships, or individuals. I conclude by discussing four newly emerging areas in the debate: normative transitions of various personal relationships, relationships with AI, epistemic partiality, and negative partiality, which concerns the negative analogue of our positive personal relationships. (shrink)

How could it be wrong to exploit—say, by paying sweatshop wages—if the exploited party benefits? How could it be wrong to do something gratuitously bad—like giving to a wasteful charity—if that is better than permissibly doing nothing? Joe Horton argues that these puzzles, known as the Exploitation Problem and All or Nothing Problem, have no unified answer. I propose one and pose a challenge for Horton’s take on the Exploitation Problem.

Supererogatory acts—good deeds “beyond the call of duty”—are a part of moral common sense, but conceptually puzzling. I propose a unified solution to three of the most infamous puzzles: the classic Paradox of Supererogation (if it’s so good, why isn’t it just obligatory?), Horton’s All or Nothing Problem, and Kamm’s Intransitivity Paradox. I conclude that supererogation makes sense if, and only if, the grounds of rightness are multi-dimensional and comparative.

The contemporary situation within the realm of ethical theories is quite complicated. Were it not enough that many classical ethical theories are evolving into the new modern forms, new types of ethical theories are arising, as well. The main aim of the paper is to introduce this issue of ethical theories which are known under the term hybrid ethical theories. A secondary aim of the paper is to describe and characterize the contemporary ethical theory of ethics of social consequences, and (...) look for the answer whether it can be an example of this type of theory. To achieve the scope, the paper begins with a short introduction into the issue of contemporary consequentialism, followed by a presentation of the concept of hybrid ethical theories and its examples. Later the variability of consequentialism and ethics of social consequences are presented. The normative basis of this theory is subsequently analysed and explored in the context of hybrid ethical theories. Finally, the study clarify that the ethics of social consequences might be considered as a hybrid ethical theory. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs an Indian Buddhist response to the overdemandingness objection, the claim that a moral theory asks too much of its adherents. In the first section, I explain the objection and argue that some Mahāyāna Buddhists, including Śāntideva, face it. In the second section, I survey some possible ways of responding to the objection as a way of situating the Buddhist response alongside contemporary work. In the final section, I draw upon writing by Vasubandhu and Śāntideva in reconstructing a (...) Mahāyāna response to the objection. An essential component of this response is the psychological transformation that the bodhisattva achieves as a result of realizing the nonexistence of the self. This allows him to radically identify his well-being with the well-being of others, thereby lessening the tension between self and others upon which the overdemandingness objection usually depends. Emphasizing the attention Mahāyāna authors pay to lessening moral demandingness in this way increases our appreciation of the philosophical sophistication of their moral thought and highlights an important strategy for responding to the overdemandingness objection that has been underdeveloped in contemporary work. (shrink)

Roger Crisp, in his book _Reasons and Goodness_, argues in favour of de-moralizing our philosophical reflection on ethics. This paper begins by explaining what ‘de-moralizing’ means. Then the paper assesses Crisp’s argument for de-moralizing and puts forward arguments against de-moralizing.

It is widely accepted that morality does not demand that we do our very best, but our most significant moral traditions do not easily accommodate this intuition. I will argue that the underlying problem is not specific to any particular tradition. Rather, it will be difficult for any moral theory to account for binary moral concepts like permissible/impermissible while also accounting for scalar moral concepts like better/worse. If only the best is considered permissible, morality will seem either unreasonably demanding or (...) implausibly minimal. But if we draw a line of duty below the optimal, then we must explain how the act that is worse is nonetheless permissible. Some have tried to explain this by appealing to non-moral considerations, and others have appealed to agent-relative moral considerations. I argue that no such approach will work. We should instead exploit the distinction between reasons for performing an act and reasons for holding someone accountable for an act’s performance. This approach will also help to clear up a confusion regarding the notion of a moral demand. (shrink)

Normative powers like promising allow agents to effect changes to their reasons, permissions and rights by the means of communicative actions whose function is to effect just those changes. An attractive view of the normativity of such powers combines a non-reductive account of their bindingness with a value-based grounding story of why we have them. This value-based view of normative powers however invites a charge of wishful thinking: Is it not bad reasoning to think that we have a given power (...) because it would be good? In this article, I offer a defence of the value-based view of normative powers against this surprisingly under-discussed objection. First, I clarify the challenge by distinguishing between two components of normative powers, which I call the material and normative components, respectively. Secondly, I defend the form of normative explanation involved, showing that it is needed to give convincing value-based explanations for other important normative phenomena, especially rights of autonomy. (shrink)

Martha C. Nussbaum, in the context of ancient philosophy, formulated ethics of human development based on 10 basic human capabilities as a precondition of meaningful human development, i.e. the ability to live a dignified human life. The paper, thus, deals with a capabilities approach with the aim of analysing the content of the idea of human dignity in Nussbaum’s understanding and its place in the conception of ethics of human development, since human dignity is the very core of the conception (...) in question. (shrink)

Bernard Williams’ integrity objection poses a significant challenge to utilitarianism, which has largely been answered by utilitarians. This paper recasts the integrity objection to show that utilitarian agents could be committed to producing the overall best states of affairs and yet not positively act to bring them about. I introduce the ‘Moral Pinch Hitter’ – someone who performs actions at the bequest of another agent – to demonstrate that utilitarianism cannot distinguish between cases in which an agent maximizes utility by (...) positively acting in response to her duty, and cases in which an agent fails morally by relying upon someone else to perform the obligatory act. The inability to distinguish among these cases establishes a new, reloaded integrity objection to utilitarianism: utilitarianism cannot explain why it would be wrong to have someone else make difficult moral decisions, and to act on those decisions, for me. (shrink)

In ethics, ‘probabilism’ refers to a position defended by a number of Catholic theologians, mainly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They held that, when one is uncertain which of a range of actions is the right one to perform, it is permissible to perform any which has a good chance of being the right one—even if there is another which has a better chance. This paper considers the value of this position from the viewpoint of modern ethical philosophy. The (...) unusual nature of probabilism as a theory focusing upon permissibility, rather than right-making properties, is explored and related to some modern attempts to set out ‘satisficing’ and ‘hybrid’ ethical theories. Such theories try to distinguish between what is best and what is permissible, and probabilism can be understood as an alternative way of supplementing a theory of right-making properties by adding to it a theory of permissibility. But a more radical version is also possible, where one abandons any attempt to identify right actions or right-making properties, and instead considers permissibility alone. Accordingly, a ‘multi-account theory’ of permissibility is proposed and defended as a model of how many people actually make moral decisions. (shrink)